Geraldine Doogue is one of Australia's most accomplished and versatile journalists and has worked in print, radio and television.

RN

Four giants of ABC journalism, Geraldine Doogue, Marian Wilkinson, Andrew Olle and Maxine McKew, have been inducted into the Australian Media Hall of Fame. The Melbourne Press Club commissioned these profiles to celebrate their contribution to journalism.

Geraldine Doogue

By Maxine McKew

Bliss it was in that dawn to be alive, but to be young, and working in the media, was very heaven. (With apologies to William Wordsworth.)

The early 1980s — a time of big hair, long lunches, and boisterous behaviour.

And, as it turned out, a consequential decade for Australia, as a new Labor government in 1983 begins to reimagine the country through a radically altered policy mix.

The changes will boost national competitiveness, lift our ambition, but without overt damage to the nation's social fabric.

It's a remarkable period to look back on — a time of contested debates, but largely conducted with more reason than rancour, and helped in no small part by a group of senior journalists with the wit and gravitas to take the time to explain and analyse the way Australia is changing.

At the centre of this hi-octane and largely blokey world is a young woman from the West who hosts ABC television's signature current affairs program, Nationwide.

From 1982, Geraldine Doogue inhabits the anchor chair in a way that few had since the early days of Michael Charlton and Bill Peach.

She's credible without being flashy. Confident but not cocky. Above all, she has that rare quality, a lively warm personality that seems to leap across the camera lens.

When it comes to big events such as party national conferences and election nights when she shares a desk with Canberra correspondent Richard Carleton, himself at the top of his game, the combined effect is electrifying.

But essentially it's Geraldine Doogue's nightly Nationwide presence which provides the boost and cachet ABC current affairs needs as it negotiates its own tricky transitions, both technical and editorial.

So where did she come from? She hadn't been a TV field reporter or researcher, or even a radio reporter, the usual entry points for a television career.

She comes instead from the world of newspapers, having started as a cadet with the West Australian and later transitioning to a job with The Australian in London.

Back in Perth, Doogue is sent to the Pilbara to report on the vast iron ore deposits being mined in that region.

Four Corners is there as well, and short of appropriate talent, interviews Geraldine.

Not to trivialise it, but this is her Lana Turner moment (the 1940s studio star was talent-spotted in a downtown Los Angeles milk bar.)

Geraldine's future is sealed once the tape is seen by east coast ABC executives.

Nearly four decades later, and in a vastly changed media environment, Doogue continues to occupy a position of central importance in the national landscape.

As Radio National's Saturday Extra host, she still seeks to find the informed middle, to be inquiring rather than querulous.

She considers the issues and angles that are less examined, or under-done, and, internationalist that she is, always keeps an eye on what's happening beyond Australia's borders.

In an industry that throws up its share of blazing comets, Doogue has managed to build and sustain a long career by focusing her journalistic talents within a defined orbit.

She could be said to have pioneered, certainly in broadcasting, serious reporting and analysis of social affairs — the way we organise our lives and how we negotiate the pressures of modern living.

It wasn't always smooth sailing. She had some rough moments. The mockery, indeed the over-the-top derision, she copped when the ABC changed format in the mid-1980s and merged prime time news and current affairs into The National, must have been hard to take.

Not long after, she left the ABC and worked for the then Lowy-controlled Network Ten as a co-presenter of Eyewitness News with Steve Liebmann.

During this time she also had her first taste of commercial radio while working for 2UE.

By 1990, Doogue was back at the ABC and immediately showed her reporting grit with her coverage of the first Gulf War.

The political class in Canberra was less than impressed with the forensic questioning that flowed from this series of stories, but two Penguin Awards and a United Nations Peace Prize validated her approach.

It could be said that her mature journalistic phase really took off when she moved to Radio National and hosted the mid-morning program Life Matters.

In the 11 years she was in this role, the program expanded and evolved to the point where it was mandatory listening for social policy makers across the country.

Doogue the journalist, the It anchor girl of the 1980s, was becoming Doogue the editorial leader.

And it showed in so many ways.

The time taken to research and deeply question a range of experts on the complexities of Australian life, and at the same time, to show respect and equal acknowledgement for the stories of ordinary people.

This is commonplace now, albeit an approach that is handled unevenly, but in the 1990s, it was ground-breaking.

In 2005, Doogue, still on Radio National, made the shift to Saturday mornings, and carved out a unique format for her Saturday Extra program.

She said she wanted to create a broadcast version of a quality weekend newspaper. How prescient she was.

As newsrooms have shrunk and the papers with them, Doogue's Saturday Extra format is as likely to take listeners through the detail of a royal commission, an examination of how the tectonic plates are shifting in regional and international affairs, the ways that widening inequality is shaking western orthodoxies, before moving on to the latest from writers, film-makers and trend setters.

It's the sort of mix that is perfect for Doogue's broad interests.

For many years she also hosted ABC Television's Compass, a program that considers inter-faith issues.

Since 2001, she has made it her business to attempt to understand the pressures of modern Islam and to that end authored the book Tomorrow's Islam published by Harper Collins in 2012.

Her second book, The Climb, was published in 2014, and examines women in leadership roles.

She is rightly seen by her peers as an industry leader, one who has always supported and promoted the talents of others, particularly of younger women.

Above all, Geraldine Doogue has set a particular kind of standard — of respectful but direct questioning and an approach grounded in deep curiosity and a need to understand.

A worthy act to emulate.

Investigative journalist Marian Wilkinson reporting on The Panama Papers story for Four Corners in 2016.

Investigative journalist Marian Wilkinson reporting on The Panama Papers story for Four Corners in 2016.

ABC News

Marian Wilkinson

By Kate McClymont

One of the finest and most forensic investigative journalists this country has ever seen, Marian Wilkinson was a Brisbane teenager when she had her first encounter with man who would later become the face of corruption of the Queensland police force.Terry Lewis, the Queensland police commissioner who was later convicted and jailed for corruption, was running the Juvenile Aid Bureau when he encountered Wilkinson wagging school and swimming in the river.

Wilkinson was given a stern talking-to about attending school and taking her education seriously. And did she? "No," she laughs, "I left school in Year 10".

Wilkinson was born in Slough, England, in 1954 and at the age of nine emigrated to Australia with her four siblings and parents John and Elizabeth.

"My mother had a lot of romantic notions about Queensland, largely from reading novels about Australia. She was shocked when she arrived," said Wilkinson.

The family lived in housing commission accommodation in Brisbane's western suburbs. Life for the new arrivals was tough.

Wilkinson never did take too kindly to the nuns or convent schooling.

When she dropped out of school at 15, her father insisted on her getting a job and paying rent.

A tedious filing job was followed by a stint in the surgery of a "crazy Albanian skin doctor who tried to sexually harass me every day I went to work", she said.

Her stint in the workforce made her realise the value of education and Wilkinson went back to school, this time a state school, where she was fortunate to encounter two brilliant teachers.

Not only did Wilkinson top the state in history, she received a scholarship to study arts at the University of Queensland.

While at university she helped establish Brisbane's first alternative FM Radio Station, 4ZZZ-FM, and was a vital part of its newsroom.

As she was completing her degree, Wilkinson, then aged 22, was simultaneously praised in Federal Parliament and received her first libel threat over a story she had written about the suspect share dealings involving Queensland Premier Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen and his cronies.

It was 1976 and the story had been published in both the student newspaper and Nation Review.

"I was completely terrified by the legal threat," said Wilkinson, who caught the train to Sydney to see George Munster, the Nation Review editor.

"I went into the office in George Street sort of quaking in my boots thinking he was going to rip me to shreds. He pulled open the filing cabinet drawers and laughingly said, 'Look, here are all our writs'."

It was another lawsuit that sparked Wilkinson's meteoric rise in the world of journalism.

Anne Summers, a rising star of The National Times, was being sued by some of the same corrupt Queensland cops Wilkinson had written about.

Summers was so impressed by her work she urged the late Evan Whitton to take her on at The National Times.

Wilkinson, who had moved to Sydney, was soon making a name for herself reporting on corruption in the Labor Party, the bashing of MP Peter Baldwin, the Griffith mafia and the Nugan Hand Bank.

If it had not been for "the sterling work of The National Times — in particular the work of Brian Toohey and Marian Wilkinson — the sordid story of Nugan Hand would have remained untold and unknown," senator Arthur Gietzelt told parliament of their forensic expose of the bank's connections to money laundering, the CIA and drug dealing.

And then came one of the biggest stories of Wilkinson's career.

"Big Shots Bugged," blared the front page of The National Times.

It was the first day of summer in 1983 and, although he wasn't referred to by name by Wilkinson, it was the beginning of the end of the career of then High Court judge Lionel Keith Murphy.

Working with Bob Bottom, Wilkinson had obtained transcripts of a highly secretive and illegal police surveillance and bugging operation which exposed extraordinary links between Sydney solicitor Morgan Ryan, a "Mr Fix-it" for organised crime in Australia, and the judiciary and corrupt police.

Wilkinson's fascination with campaign donations and the links between politics and money deepened with her first of three postings to Washington.

This became one of the recurring themes in her journalism and it was at the heart of The Fixer, her unauthorised biography of Labor party strongman Graham Richardson.

In 1989, Wilkinson won a Walkley Award for Best TV Current Affairs reporting and a Logie for her Four Corners program, True Believers, which chronicled the dumping of then federal Liberal leader John Howard for Andrew Peacock.

As the judges noted, Wilkinson had achieved "unbelievable interviews" and "the impact of this program is still being felt on the national political scene".

The following year, Wilkinson joined The Sydney Morning Herald, but she was soon back at Four Corners as the program's first female executive producer.

She later returned to the Herald where she worked as deputy editor.

In 2002, she enjoyed her third stint in Washington where she reported on the Iraq war and the 2004 presidential campaign.

On her return, she worked at The Australian for a year before rejoining the Herald as national security editor.

In 2003, Wilkinson and David Marr published their impeccably researched book, Dark Victory, which examined the Tampa affair and the 'Children Overboard' saga.

Wilkinson has always had an uncanny ability to spot crucial issues in society long before they became the subject of mainstream media scrutiny.

In 2008, she travelled to the Arctic on a Canadian Coast Guard icebreaker to observe the dramatic decline in summer sea ice caused by global warming.

The Tipping Point — a joint Herald/Four Corners investigation — won her a second Walkley as well as the Eureka Prize for Environmental Journalism.

In 2016, Wilkinson was nominated for a Walkley for her Four Corners' story on The Panama Papers, which exposed Australians who were the beneficiaries of offshore tax structures set up in Panama.

Among her peers, Wilkinson has long been regarded as one of the finest investigative reporters this country has ever seen but to the wider world she is renowned for upholding the finest values of the profession: honesty, ethics and decency.

Broadcaster and journalist Andrew Olle was respected by colleagues, opponents and the public for his fairness, quiet scepticism, calmness, gentle humour and lack of hubris.

Broadcaster and journalist Andrew Olle was respected by colleagues, opponents and the public for his fairness, quiet scepticism, calmness, gentle humour and lack of hubris.

Andrew Olle

By Peter Manning

There are interviews and interviews. Much depends on where each wants to be when the music stops.

Andrew Olle did not want a scalp. As a consummate radio and television presenter and interviewer he wanted light — a light shone on what the interviewee knew better than he.

He didn't care whether he "won" or not, he wanted his listeners and viewers to know more about the person and the subject they had just experienced.

It was a unique softly, softly approach that won him so many hearts.

The late, great Mark Colvin, presenter of ABC Radio's PM in his later years, called Olle "Australia's best interviewer" in his 2012 Andrew Olle Lecture.

In my memory, the most enjoyable of these was Olle's dance with his old mate, Queensland premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen, back on September 22, 1986.

For 17 minutes each parried the other, both with grins affixed.

Bjelke-Petersen was live from Brisbane by satellite, Olle in the big Sydney studio.

A state election was just five weeks away and Bjelke-Petersen had created seven new seats, so making seats in the bush yet again worth double the electoral value of those in the cities of Queensland.

Olle was like a dog with a bone about the inequities of state electoral boundaries. Bjelke-Petersen expressed faux surprise that Olle, a well-known Queensland boy, was asking such questions. He wondered aloud if the southerners had got to him.

Even in the director's room above the studio we were laughing. On and on this dance proceeded. To my mind, Andrew's charm, good humour, sense of fairness and respect for his sparring partner brought him through the games being played. Back in the green room at Gore Hill, we laughed at Joh's much-used cliches ("Don't you worry about that") being worked to capacity.

In truth, Andrew Olle, for all his confidence and bravado on stage, was a worrier. He was famous for his meticulous concern for getting scripts and vision right, for getting the facts right and for getting the "big picture" right.

Allan Hogan, who was an executive producer during Olle's time at the Nine Network in the early 1980s, remembers him as "considered", taking his time about ensuring his films were perfect in every way: "We'd often be working overnight in the edit rooms until 7 in the morning with only an hour or more to go before his film was to be on air!"

Annette, his wife, recalls Olle saying he was "cursed with seeing both sides of any argument".

Again, of course, it was about getting balance and fairness exactly right as well. He was the last person to rush to judgement.

It was this thoughtfulness and ability to listen that made Olle not just an incisive interviewer but also a great radio presenter.

His eight years with his morning ABC Radio audience, 1987 to 1995, built an unparalleled affection for him in Sydney.

His sudden death shook the city to its core. For weeks I heard strangers lamenting the loss of Andrew, wanting to express their grief as though he was part of their family. It was an extraordinary outpouring of feeling, mirroring Olle's feeling for his audience.

But it is also true that in today's terms he was overwhelmingly about "content". He was a news and current affairs addict. From the day in 1967 when he walked in the doors of ABC Brisbane as a trainee news cadet to the day in December 1995 when brain cancer ended his life, he was right across the issues of the day.

His four years at This Day Tonight won him a TV Week Logie for his report in August 1976 on Queensland Police's massive raid on a hippie commune at Cedar Bay north of Cairns. He was just 30.

In June 1978, he used his contacts in Brisbane to do a Four Corners report on Australia's first Aboriginal member of Federal Parliament, the Liberals' Neville Bonner. Interviews included Charles Perkins and Kath Walker, both Aboriginal leaders. In fact, reports on Aboriginal conditions around Australia — Wilcannia (NSW), Turkey Creek (WA), Hermannsburg Reserve (NT) — became a theme in Olle's reports throughout his life.

By the time the ABC's new daily current affairs program Nationwide hit the screens in 1980, Olle was already a polished filmmaker. He joined Mark Colvin, Jenny Brockie, Paul Murphy and me — almost all of us rookies in the documentary mode.

He and I did a report on the corrupt Nugan Hand bank in August 1980 and I marvelled at the master's ability to turn finance into pictures.

The skill led Andrew to join the ABC's rural weekly Big Country, where he enlarged his long-form film skills.

In late 1981, his work was noticed at Channel 9 and Allan Hogan stole him for Packer's new quality program Sunday.

Olle hit the ground running with an in-depth report on the prevalence of anorexia nervosa among young women.

Next came a daring report on the findings of the Costigan royal commission in Melbourne (a taboo subject at the Packer station).

Then a profile of rising New Zealand soprano Kiri Te Kanawa.

And a trip to Indonesia's rebel Irian Jaya province. He stayed four years as the program became a Sunday staple.

When Jonathan Holmes and I stole Andrew back to the ABC as the presenter of a new-look Four Corners in 1985, we knew we had a world-class professional. For the next 10 years, Olle would be the face of the ABC's flagship current affairs program.

Each year, Andrew would do 10 or so studio specials. Here's a sample: the new era kicked off with a two-part series on the AIDS crisis. A month later, apartheid South Africa. East Timor. Industrial laws in Australia. Threats to Kakadu. Women in the Anglican Church. The Liberal Party "wets" future. The Fitzgerald report in Queensland on police corruption. A profile of Ted Mack, the first independent in Parliament for 20 years. Youth suicide rates. Malcolm Turnbull's republic idea. How did Hewson lose the 1993 election? The meaning of "no" in relationships.

All of these, and many more, tied to the news of the day with film reports and Olle studio interviews.

In all this, Olle was keeping a weekly program on its toes and a daily audience of loyal ABC Radio listeners amused and informed.

After Olle's Four Corners went to air, the next day we'd shout ourselves a long Italian lunch with those in town at the time.

There was no happier participant than Andrew Olle. A sensitive soul in a tough industry.

After a career as a journalist, Maxine McKew unseated prime minister John Howard in 2007.

After a career as a journalist, Maxine McKew unseated prime minister John Howard in 2007.

ABC News: Kathleen Calderwood

Maxine McKew

By Margot Saville

On February 25, 2007, journalist Maxine McKew dropped a bombshell, announcing she was running against prime minister John Howard in the seat of Bennelong on Sydney's lower north shore.

Almost no-one thought she would succeed. After the announcement, McKew told a journalist: "The seat is winnable. I'm not in this as a distraction or to win a by-election down the track. John Howard isn't going to stand down and just retire from politics. I'm doing this because I want to win."

In November that year, McKew defeated Howard, who became only the second serving Australian PM to lose his seat.

Incoming PM Kevin Rudd sent her a text: "You are a giant-slayer".

The Sisters of St Joseph, who needed divine help for the sainthood of Mary McKillop, were also thrilled. "This could be the second miracle," they said.

In Rudd's government, McKew became the parliamentary secretary for education, joining Bob Carr, Tony Abbott and Malcolm Turnbull as one of the many journalists who had successfully made a transition into politics.

In that new role, she worked in an area that has been a lifelong passion, early childhood education. She helped create legislation that improved standards and training.

In a ministerial reshuffle in 2009, McKew became parliamentary secretary for infrastructure, transport, regional development and local government. In the 2010 election, she lost the seat to former tennis champion John Alexander.

In her maiden speech to Parliament, McKew quoted Dr Martin Luther King Junior: "'We are all tied together in a single garment of destiny.' What I have learnt from a lifetime of reporting is that we are at our best when we work together and when we appreciate difference. Diversity enriches us. It lifts the spirit."

McKew was born in 1953 and grew up in Brisbane where her father, Bryan McKew, was a boilermaker.

When her mother Elaine died of breast cancer, the five-year-old Maxine was sent to live with her grandparents for three years.

After her father remarried, McKew and her sister Margo were reunited with him in Marooka and attended the Catholic girls' school, All Hallows.

An entry in the school magazine says: "Maxine is a girl seen frequently going to the reference library from which she always manages to extract some piece of knowledge no-one has ever come across or is ever likely to."

After graduating from high school, McKew briefly attended university before dropping out and living in London for two years, where she supported herself with a variety of temporary jobs, including relief typing at the BBC.

A letter requesting a job — cannily written on BBC letterhead — was rewarded with a cadetship at the ABC in 1974.

In 1976, McKew became the host of the current affairs program This Day Tonight.

In a 32-year career at the ABC, she also worked on The 7.30 Report, Lateline, The Carlton-Walsh Report, AM, PM and The Bottom Line.

For a time, McKew was based in Washington as the ABC correspondent, leading to a life-long love of American politics.

Her outstanding broadcasting skills — in radio and television — were acknowledged with a Logie award and a Walkley Award in 1998.

In October 2006, she announced that she was leaving the ABC. "I've done everything in journalism that I ever wanted to do," she said.

While working as a broadcaster, McKew also wrote a column for The Bulletin magazine. From 1999 to 2004, Lunch with Maxine McKew was a must-read, breaking significant stories.

In 2003, she interviewed former ALP leader Kim Beazley, who implied he was willing to make another run against opposition leader Simon Crean. The story dominated the headlines for days and Beazley was forced to make a bid, which was unsuccessful.

The most notorious column was a 2000 lunch with NSW Labor machine man John Della Bosca, who blurted out to McKew that Beazley, then federal party leader, was wrong to oppose the GST. Unfortunately for "Della", attacking the GST was a key plank of Labor's election strategy and he was forced to abandon his bid for presidency of the party.

These columns and many others led to The Australian Financial Review naming McKew as "one of the top ten exercisers of covert power in Australia".

One judge, pollster Rod Cameron, said: "What better definition of a puppeteer than somebody who is going to sit in the back of a restaurant and say: 'You can talk to me …', and some of them are stupid enough to do so."

McKew also received the Magazine Publishers' Award for Columnist of the Year 2003 and the Centenary Medal for Excellence in Journalism 2001.

After leaving politics, McKew threw herself into her third career, writing and consulting. She penned a successful memoir, Tales From the Political Trenches, an account of her brief but tumultuous time in Federal Parliament. In it, she considered the high price the Australian Labor Party has paid for the deadly Rudd/Gillard conflict, accurately predicting that competing views about Rudd and Gillard would divide Labor loyalists for years.

At the same time, McKew joined Michael Traill's philanthropy group, Social Ventures Australia, working as a consultant with the education team.

In 2014, she wrote her second book, Class Act, a study of the key challenges in Australian schooling.

Maxine now lives in Melbourne with her partner, Bob Hogg, and is a director of Per Capita, the John Cain Foundation, Playgroup Australia and the Lorne Sculpture Biennale.

In 2015, she was appointed to serve on the board of the State Library of Victoria and reappointed for a further term in 2018. She also serves as a non-executive director of New Energy Solar, is a Vice Chancellor's Fellow at the University of Melbourne and a Distinguished Fellow of the Australia India Institute.

In 2013, McKew returned to Bennelong for the opening of the substantially renovated campus of Karonga, a school for children with physical and intellectual disabilities.

In her final days as a politician, she had fought hard to secure a $2.5 million grant for the school. Was it her finest hour as a politician?

"Absolutely," she says. "Not something that makes headlines, but something that will make a real difference in the lives of these people."

Advocates have welcomed the growing public awareness of how pet abuse can be wielded as a weapon against people. But according to the authors of a new book, much less attention has been paid to how family violence affects pets themselves.

Since the airing of the gut-wrenching documentary Leaving Neverland, many of us have wrestled with an uncomfortable, yet essential question: given everything we know, can we continue listening to Michael Jackson's music?